hundred thousand souls, was seen in the selfsame hour, in one great body, humbling itself before God in solemn prayer and devotion. What a noble, what a touching spectacle! So many thousand human beings, engaged at the same instant, in spontaneous devotion, to breathe out their sorrows before God, and offer up the pious incense of their love, for the treasure of which his mysterious will has bereaved them. This was no state ceremony; no cold compliance of public decency; no mere outward shew, where the heart is unconcerned. Inferior only to the vehemence of private grief (and it would be affectation to identify them) the British family mourn their loss in a spirit of much affliction, which proves its sincerity, because it is not violent. They have seen a royal branch destroyed, from which, in the very moment of its blight, they were prophesying auspicious fruit. This, as a national calamity, they have cause to deplore. But it is not this alone that prompts their sighs. They weep over the grave, where youth, and virtue, and beauty, lie entombed. Their sympathies have been touched deeper than their fears. We question whether the annals of any country can produce the record of a scene so morally sublime, as England on this day offered to the world. Uncalled by any spiritual ordinance, unbidden by any mandate of temporal authority, but prompted only by their own unfeigned sorrow, and their profound reliance upon the consolations of reli gion, they voluntarily desisted from public affairs, and with humble, awful earnestness, filled our sacred temples, to supplicate the throne of mercy. A whole people thus prostrate before God, that they may tell the anguish of their hearts, implore forgiveness for the past, and mercy for the future, has in it something so holy, so majestical, so edifying, that we would blush for ourselves, if we hesitated to acknowledge the emotions of piety with which we are inspired. If the expression of such feelings, in individuals, is accounted virtue, and the assured means of divine grace, we may be permitted to indulge the pious hope, that as an act of national devotion, it will procure us that favour, without which all human wisdom is as nothing*. * Towards the close of Louis XIV.'s reign in France, a calamity of a similar nature occurred, when the Dauphin himself was buried in the same coffin with his wife and child. The devastation was, in truth, wider than on the present occasion, but not so fatal to the direct line, as other children of the same marriage remained to reap the succession. The preacher to the court, the celebrated La Rue, chose a text on the occasion, which was much admired for its descriptive appropriateness, and was followed by a touching and eloquent discourse. It was as follows: "Wherefore commit ye this great evil against your own souls, to cut off from you man, and wouan, and child, out of Judah, to leave none behind ?”. Jer. xliv. 7. The orator thus commences his discourse:-" He that is holy, he that is true, he that hath the key of the house of David, ke The inhabitants of the town of Kingston, who were the first to set the example of shutting their that openeth and no man shutteth, and shutteth and no man openeth, (Rev. iii. 7.), hath now exercised before our eyes that absolute power which none can resist; and the terrifying menaces which he uttered by the mouths of his prophets to his criminal people, are this day changed into real events. What events! What a sight! His arm falls heavy upon the princes as well as upon their subjects. A house like the house of David, raised by the hands of wisdom, supported by so many columns which seemed to render it unassailable to the assaults of fortune and the injuries of time. Into this house, God, who for so many years has held it open to victory, to splendour, and to joy, and shut it against grief and sorrow, now extends solitude, and introduces death. Hast thou, then, O God, granted to the reign of a sovereign, who has almost seen us all born, and whom we revere as a common father, this unprecedented extent, only to display in it unparalleled causes of sorrow? Hast thou placed in our view so fair a line of descendants, appearing destined to support it, only to snatch away in twenty days that which might have formed the support of his throne for an age? By what excess of crimes have we been able to merit the pouring forth of the vessels of Divine wrath, that man and woman and child should be cut off from among us, and leave none remaining?" We may, however, apply the manner in which the death of the French Princes is described, to the decease of our own :— "While all things were in quiet silence, and that night was in the midst of her swift course; thine Almighty word leaped down from Heaven, out of thy royal throne, as a fierce man of war, into the midst of a land, and brought thine unfeigned commandment as a sharp sword, and standing up, filled all things with death." (Wisdom of Solomon, xviii. 14-16.) "And upon whom did this death-dealing word alight?" says the preacher. "Not as heretofore, O Lord, upon the first-born of Egypt, the enemies of thy name, but upon the first-born of thy shops and houses upon the melancholy event of the death of the Princess, were foremost in all other respects. The pulpit, reading and clerk's desk, and corporation pew, were covered with black cloth, and remained so for a considerable time. Their public notice for the prevention of the exhibition of shows, or any thing else that would create a noise, at their chartered fair, which commenced on the 13th, continued with the same order and regularity, the charter being for holding the fair for nine days. On the 19th the mayor, bailiffs, town-clerk, and other officers of the corporation, went to church in procession, but without their robes; the mace was not carried, nor any of the corporation regalia. It being known that the Reverend William Gandy, the vicar, would preach a funeral sermon upon the death of the Princess, the church was much crowded. The reverend gentleman took his text from the 40th chapter of Isaiah, verses 6, 7, and 8. On his conclusion, he gave notice, that he should preach another sermon on the day of the funeral, when a collection would be made church, the mother and her child." The husband, indeed, in the present instance, is spared, but spared to feel the keenest affliction; as according to the Levitical law, when two birds were offered in sacrifice for impurity, one was slain, and the other was permitted to escape, though sullied with the death of its mate (Lev. xiv. 5.) May those who have already fallen be deemed a sufficient infliction for the sins of the land. for an Institution, of which the Princess was patroness. During the residence of the Princess and Prince at Claremont, the corporation of Kingston paid them every possible attention. The bailiffs presented the Prince with a permission to shoot on the manor of Kingston soon after his Serene Highness came there. The last time the beloved Princess passed through the town, was on the 12th of August, when she went to pay her dutiful regards to her Royal Father, the Prince Regent, on the celebration of his birth-day, at the Countess of Cardigan's, at Richmond, when she complained of experiencing considerable inconvenience from the holes and bad state of one of the streets, which being made known to the corporation, it has since been new paved. The corporation of Kingston was the first public body who presented an address of condolence to Prince Leopold, through the medium of Baron de Hardenbroke. The following is a copy: "MY LORD, The Corporation of Kingston, deeply impressed with feelings of sorrow and regret at the great loss sustained by this country in the recent calamities at Claremont, and fully sensible of the trying and most painful situation in which his Serene Highness the Prince of Saxe Coburg is now placed, most respectfully beg leave to inquire after the state of his Serene Highness's health, to sympathize in his misfortune, and to unite their hopes and wishes, with those of the country at large, that his Serene 'Highness will be enabled to yield with fortitude and resignation |